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A farewell to arms, legs and other assorted body parts
Food Microbiology, 1999, 16, 541 Available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
Article No. fmic.1999.0324
EDITORIAL
A farewell to arms. . . legs and other assorted body parts C. Batt
With the new millennium and the change it will bring, so too will a new editor take over Food Microbiology. E¡ective 1 January, 2000, Dr Mary Lou Tortorello of the Food and Drug Administration will lend her considerable expertise in food microbiology to lead the journal. I have known Dr Tortorello for a number of years and I believe she will bring a new spark of enthusiasm to the journal. She has a wide range of interests in the area of food microbiology and especially food safety. It is likely that food safety will be a dominant theme in our profession and her experience will serve those needs well. For me this is a bittersweet moment. Over the past ten years I have been privileged to serve as editor trying to make fair decisions about the merits of several thousand manuscripts. In carrying out this task, I have relied on the services of more than six hundred reviewers. It is their contribution to the journal that should be recognized and my thanks go to each and every one of them. While peer-review is not always perfect, it is a system that ensures equality and engages the community of scientists to not only contribute the best but also to ensure that only the best reach the journal pages. In the past ten years, this journal has increased its page content by over 50% and we
0740 - 0020/99/060541 + 01 $30.000
have gone from four issues per year to six. We have instituted a www-based system for authors to track manuscripts and for reviewers to post their comments. For a small journal this is quite an accomplishment and I thank my students at Cornell for installing the system and keeping it running. During my term as editor of Food Microbiology I have tried to keep a balanced content even when trends pulled the tide of scienti¢c attention to a particular subject. I have seen the passing of bacteriocins, and the evolution of acid tolerance in Escherichia coli. The journal has survived the controversy of bovine spongiform encephalitis and I note with some special pride that this journal published one of the ¢rst reviews suggesting a linkage between consumption of beef from BSE infected cows and CJD in humans. While I cannot give you a precise account the journal has published articles from scientists in virtually every continent, although my term will pass without one from either of the polar regions. Nevertheless I have had the honor of witnessing science as it is practiced throughout the world. To the readers of this page, I wish you the best and hope that my service to the community of food microbiologists has been of some value. Best regards.
# 1999 Academic Press
Article No. fmic.1999.0324
EDITORIAL
A farewell to arms. . . legs and other assorted body parts C. Batt
With the new millennium and the change it will bring, so too will a new editor take over Food Microbiology. E¡ective 1 January, 2000, Dr Mary Lou Tortorello of the Food and Drug Administration will lend her considerable expertise in food microbiology to lead the journal. I have known Dr Tortorello for a number of years and I believe she will bring a new spark of enthusiasm to the journal. She has a wide range of interests in the area of food microbiology and especially food safety. It is likely that food safety will be a dominant theme in our profession and her experience will serve those needs well. For me this is a bittersweet moment. Over the past ten years I have been privileged to serve as editor trying to make fair decisions about the merits of several thousand manuscripts. In carrying out this task, I have relied on the services of more than six hundred reviewers. It is their contribution to the journal that should be recognized and my thanks go to each and every one of them. While peer-review is not always perfect, it is a system that ensures equality and engages the community of scientists to not only contribute the best but also to ensure that only the best reach the journal pages. In the past ten years, this journal has increased its page content by over 50% and we
0740 - 0020/99/060541 + 01 $30.000
have gone from four issues per year to six. We have instituted a www-based system for authors to track manuscripts and for reviewers to post their comments. For a small journal this is quite an accomplishment and I thank my students at Cornell for installing the system and keeping it running. During my term as editor of Food Microbiology I have tried to keep a balanced content even when trends pulled the tide of scienti¢c attention to a particular subject. I have seen the passing of bacteriocins, and the evolution of acid tolerance in Escherichia coli. The journal has survived the controversy of bovine spongiform encephalitis and I note with some special pride that this journal published one of the ¢rst reviews suggesting a linkage between consumption of beef from BSE infected cows and CJD in humans. While I cannot give you a precise account the journal has published articles from scientists in virtually every continent, although my term will pass without one from either of the polar regions. Nevertheless I have had the honor of witnessing science as it is practiced throughout the world. To the readers of this page, I wish you the best and hope that my service to the community of food microbiologists has been of some value. Best regards.
# 1999 Academic Press